Welcoming the Green! Spring Equinox / St. Patrick’s Day

Invitation: It’s Spring Equinox, the beginning of Spring. The early woodland wildflowers are blooming, the moss garden is brilliant green, and it’s St. Patrick’s Day, so it’s time for some Irish Music!

You are invited to come enjoy the Moss Garden Sanctuary and learn about moss gardening.

We’ll learn about the native spring ephemeral wildflowers that are blooming in the woods.

The High Strung Irish Jam will play some lively reels and jigs.

Epilogue: It was a gorgeous day for this neighborhood event at which to celebrate the start of Spring. We enjoyed seeing the beauty of the various mosses. Although it is gorgeous throughout the year, Spring is the moss garden’s chance to truly glow in its vibrant new clothing of chartreuse green. Here are some moss portraits. You can click on the photo to see the name of the moss. Notice that some of the mosses have spore capsules, spores being one of their methods of reproduction.

In the woodland garden we saw the many lovely Spring ephemeral wildflowers blooming, taking this opportunity to absorb the sunlight before the trees leaf out. We learned that the ants, who love to feed their young the little drop of fat that is on each seed, have now spread the wildflowers throughout the woods where before there had been only small patches planted from a plant-rescue. You can click on the photo to see the name of the wildflower.

The High Strung Irish Jam musicians enjoyed their opportunity to shine in the sunlight, too! And we enjoyed their reels, jigs, hornpipes, and Irish polkas!

Wishing you all the blessings of Spring. Here is a poem for you that a friend just sent me today:

Elizabeth Cox

Betty Lou for sharing I always enjoy the documentations and your choice of poems and pics. These are gorgeous pictures and thank you for including the names Of each plant. Those mosses and wildflowers Are quite beautiful. I will try to send you some pics of the lovely ones in my art as well. May Apples have just shown their heads on my property. I managed to find a few more trout Lillys though they are past their prime. We actually saw Bluiett peeking out there plenty of violets I am so surprised at how spread out all the Daffidil bulbs are here now there must be hundreds upon hundreds of daffodils it was quite lovely week or two ago. It is nice to have water in the ephemeral ponds too. The amphibians are also enjoying the spring, the rains and even the snow. I look forward to being with you in ceremony or “labyrinthing” soon.

Elizabeth, Hi! I’d love to see your photos. Our next projects are a couple of small ponds, so I hope to attract some amphibians, too. I look forward to more ceremony and labyrinth walking with you soon.

Elizabeth Cox

We have many. The ag day tomorrow in Pittsboro will feature a sampling as Phillip is bringing some to his booths there. Grand trees of Chatham and maybe Rocky River will be there too.(He is in both.). Tadpoles all kinds, frogs, salamanders, toads it is a loud and boisterous ruckus here nightly and when rains come in.

Hi Ann. Our’s is a bottomland woods, so we were interested in restoring the species of plants that would have been there originally, before the land was converted to pasture. The land has now gone through succession from pasture to pines to hardwoods, so we were comfortable reintroducing bottomland wildflowers that we rescued from development. All the wildflowers pictured would/could have been present except for the trilliums, which were carried there by the ants, and the Virginia bluebells, which are up in the Moss Garden.